


The Other Side of the Coin

by Madkin



Category: Manifest (TV 2018), Manifest (TV)
Genre: Angst, Best Friends, Female Friendship, Friendship/Love, Love Triangles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-20 04:08:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16548584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Madkin/pseuds/Madkin
Summary: A look into what Michaela being back means to Jared and Lourdes.





	The Other Side of the Coin

**Author's Note:**

> I'm obsessed with this unfortunate love triangle. Please tell me I'm not the only one. I am? Oh well.
> 
> This is just a short something I wrote. Not sure where it's going or if I'll continue it, so I'd love some feedback if/when this fandom exists (exist sooner). Okay, I'm done.

Jared takes a deep breath as he turns his key. He slowly walks in and puts his jacket and bag by the door. “Lourdes?” He doesn’t know how to tell her that he saw Michaela and that she knows. They’d decided together that neither of them should go to the hanger. The decision had been hard to make, but what was harder was seeing the footage of families reuniting and knowing he could have been there. Michaela’s dad called him, told him he belongs there with the rest of the family no matter what had happened in the last 5 years but Jared politely declined. He cited this missing girls case he’s heading and every hour does count, but he’s not the only person working the case. Someone would have covered for him for a couple hours while he greeted Michaela and they would have been more than happy to. It’s not every day your loved ones come back from the dead. 

“In the kitchen,” Lourdes calls out. He doesn’t smell anything cooking so he’s not surprised when he finds his wife wallowing in a carton of mint chocolate chip, Michaela’s favorite. 

“Mint chip huh?” Lourdes meets his eyes and he feels guilt rush through him. Michaela had already called him a couple times, or maybe it really was Grace, before he saw her at the precinct today. Lourdes hadn’t heard from her once and she felt too guilty to reach out herself. 

Lourdes hands him her spoon and grabs another from the drawer. “Tell me about your day. Any luck with those girls?”

He knows she’s looking for a distraction but he has to tell her. “I saw Michaela.”

Her shoulders are tense when she turns to look at him. “You saw her? Where?”

“At the precinct. She stopped by.” He twirls his spoon in the ice cream. 

“And?” Lourdes sets her spoon down as she turns her full attention to her husband. “What did she say? You talked to her, right? Is she okay? Does she know? About her mom?’ He notes that she doesn’t ask the obvious question. 

“I talked to her. She’s okay, I think. We didn’t really- We didn’t talk long. A few minutes.” He’s not someone who stumbles over his words. Lourdes makes an impatient ‘keep going’ gesture. “I don’t know if she knows about her mom I assume someone told her. It’s been a few days.” He scratches his beard as he tries to think through those few minutes with her. “She saw my ring.”

“Oh.” Lourdes deflates. She leans back against the counter. “Did you-”

“Yeah.” Jared takes his first bite of the melting ice cream. “I told her it was you.”

Lourdes slowly nods. Well, there went any hope of getting her best friend back. “So she hates me, right?”

“No. She didn’t-” say she hated Lourdes. Just left him standing there when he tried to explain.

“What did she say?”

Jared shrugs. “She didn’t say much. I tried to explain and she just- she walked away.”

“She walked away? That’s it?” Jared brings his spoon to his lips. “There must be more.”

“I only talked to her for a few minutes.”

“But what did she say?” She knows that most people would think she’d feel jealous or insecure about her husband talking to the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with (and she’s felt that apprehension too over the last few days), but right now she’s jealous of Jared. Michaela called him and then he got to see her and talk to her today. What if Michaela never wanted to see her again?

Jared stares at his wife helplessly. He knows how much she wishes Michaela would reach out, how much she wants her best friend back. “She looks exactly the same.”

Lourdes sinks back into the ice cream. “She does?”

“Doesn’t look like she aged a day.” Jared’s spoon stops mid-air. “It’s crazy.”

“Did she seem okay?”

Jared meets her eyes. “She seemed like Michaela.’

* * *

Lourdes paces the living room as she waits for Jared to arrive home. He’d called her earlier to tell her he was on his way and now she was just impatiently waiting, so when he finally walks in, it should be no surprise that she doesn’t even wait for him to close the door. “So?”

Jared sighs as he hears his wife behind him. He shuts their front door and puts his bag down and then turns around with a tired smile. “Nice to see you too, honey.” She doesn’t return his smile “Yeah, I saw her.”

Lourdes resumes her pacing and Jared slips his jacket and shoes off as he watches her. Michaela wasn’t officially back at work yet but she was making almost daily stops at the precinct to talk to the big boss. Every day Michaela didn’t reach out the more anxious Lourdes become. “Did she say-”

Jared shakes his head. “We didn’t talk about it.” He’d addressed the situation with Michaela exactly once and on accident. He didn’t go to her house with the intention of accusing her of lashing out to get his attention but it had slipped out nonetheless. It wasn’t so much that he believed that’s what she was doing, but more that Jared didn’t understand how Michaela could ignore the fact that he’d married her best friend. It clicked for him in the worst way when Michaela detailed for him exactly all the ways her life was falling apart around her in the three days she’d been back. He didn’t tell Lourdes about it. He’s not sure why. He’s told her everything else, but when the opportunity to tell her came he couldn’t get the words off his tongue. “Maybe you should go by Grace’s house.”

“I can’t.” Lourdes twists her wedding ring as she tries to reconcile the fact that her husband may cost her, her best friend. 

“Michaela’s not-” He stops short. He doesn’t know how to tell her that Michaela said she didn’t hold anything against them without admitting he’d been lying by omission. “She doesn’t seem like she’s holding grudges. You should go see her.”

When Lourdes doesn’t falter or make eye contact he gently steps in her path. With a soft tone, he says, “Go to Grace’s.”

Lourdes comes home an hour later despondent. He manages to get out of her that Michaela wasn’t home or at least that was what Grace said. She locks herself in the bathroom and then goes to bed before him.

* * *

The next morning Lourdes is adamant that she’s going into work with him. If the pattern holds, Michaela will show up at some point and Lourdes doesn’t want to give her any more opportunities to avoid her. He thinks it’s a bad idea, but he knows he can’t stop Lourdes so he drives her to work with him. She insists on sitting in the waiting chairs at least 10 feet from his desk so that when Michaela walks in she won’t have to see them together. He’s not sure how much difference 10 feet is going to make but he respects and shares the sentiment so he doesn’t say anything.

When Michaela does walk in, it’s a disaster. That’s not entirely true. It could have been so much worse, but watching Michaela’s surprised face and then panicked eyes switch between his and Lourdes’s is painful. Lourdes’s disappointment as Michaela walks past her with an insincere promise to catch up soon hurts him just as much. 

He finds Michaela later on and resolves to put in a good word for Lourdes. Michaela assures him again that she’s not trying to punish either of them which might make the whole thing worse because how can he or Lourdes be upset with her for needing time to adjust? The extent to which Michaela needs to adjust hits him hard as she casually mentions her last range time was 10 days ago in her timeline. That means it’s only been a few days for her. For her, it was only a week since he proposed. Did that mean she was still in love with him? He thinks he gets his answer when she admits that seeing him and Lourdes together made her want to puke or faint or both. In response, he finds himself making a small admission of his own; he never replaced her.


End file.
